Forbidden fruit: transgenic papaya in Thailand.

Dressed in white, hooded ‘‘personal protection suits,’’ Greenpeace activists donned goggles, gloves, and respiratory masks—the kind of dress you expect to see in the clean zone of a nanotechnology laboratory, not in a field in bucolic northeast Thailand. Easily bridging a barbed wire fence with a stepladder, they began pulling transgenic papaya (Carica papaya) from the trees, throwing the fruit into biohazard waste bins. The protestors stood for photographs—the press had been alerted—before a large yellow banner printed both in Thai and English that read: ‘‘Stop GMO Field Trials.’’ It was July 27, 2004—doomsday for agricultural biotechnology in Thailand. The protest at the Thai Department of Agriculture’s (DOA) confined field trial set into motion a countrywide moratorium on all field testing of transgenic crops. Since the 1980s, the country had been a regional leader in developing a competitive biotechnology sector. What went wrong? This is not an exceptional case. Since 1998, virus-resistant papaya had been grown widely in Hawaii, but had failed to be commercialized in many other places. This is despite the fact that genetically engineered or genetically modified (GE or GM) virus-resistant papaya is close to an ideal ‘‘pro-poor’’ GE crop. The aim of this essay is to contrast the rapid and widespread adoption of transgenic papaya in Hawaii, where it saved an industry, with that of Thailand, where it has yet to be approved for commercialization—even though in some regions virus infection rates are as high as 100% and yields are dramatically reduced. Understanding the political and social factors that stymied this promising technology in Thailand may help in devising better strategies for introducing the next generation of biotechnology crops to other countries. AN UNRULY VIRUS